


Letters of Note

by zechariahfour (sodas)



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: 1980s, Gen, Letters, M/M, POV Outsider, Post-Series, unusual formatting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 03:57:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18307721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sodas/pseuds/zechariahfour
Summary: The following is a series of abridged excerpts from Elaine Prescott’s ‘Letters of Note: American Correspondences from the 1900s, Vol. 4: 1975-1999’.--The young man, referred to by some with the title of that first photo—“Dawn”—simply vanished from Okumura’s lens. Okumura never spoke about “Dawn” in interviews or remarks on his own work, and he never answered questions about him. “Dawn”, as a person, remained entirely in mystery […]The letters, notes, and excerpts compiled here were donated to this project from Okumura’s personal works by his niece. Notably, each of these was written by Okumura, and not received by him. In other words, these are letters that were never sent.--Dear Ash,How are you doing?





	Letters of Note

**Author's Note:**

> spoilers for end of manga/garden of light. takes place in 1980s continuity.

_The following is a series of abridged excerpts from Elaine Prescott’s ‘Letters of Note: American Correspondences from the 1900s, Vol. 4: 1975-1999’._

[…] The decades surrounding this period were full of political intrigue, especially evident in the superpower of the United States. The mafia and the military ran rampant in equal measure, with their strides sometimes taking them in similar directions. This was a time of scandals blowing wide, sensationalism versus deliberate ignorance with little middle ground, and the upheaval of many American sensibilities. Several politicians and other members of America’s elite were found to have dark ties to darker secrets. Today’s textbooks are forced to acknowledge it if only because it was such an influential period in America’s modern history, both socially and internationally. However, the most insidious crimes are tactfully overshadowed by other, more palatable events, at best granted footnotes…Ultimately, the most tragic redactions in these history lessons are those which remove the humanity of these years from the equation. This period was as vibrant as it was dark; its livelihood was not erased by fear or evil deeds. We should not erase it, either.

[A]…candid portrait of an American can come from anywhere—even from another country. A Japanese national named Eiji Okumura became recognized in the photography scene beginning in the late 1980s. He had only moved to America a handful of years before his work began to spread, and was known for a few of his quirks…[such as] his youthful face, the quiet wisdom that lay beneath it, and his polite but infamous refusals to talk about his personal life. Yet more so was he known for his art: serene shorelines, exuberant children and loved ones, and an apparent obsession with the rising sun. It was supposed that this motif came from Japan’s moniker, “The Land of the Rising Sun”, but Okumura neither confirmed nor denied this in any of his interviews. However, some years after his career had already taken off, he began to release photographs he’d taken before his name had ever been known. The majority of them were dated from 1985 […]

[The] first of these images was of a young, unnamed man, reclining at a windowsill. The New York skyline is visible in the background, while the young man is undeniably the subject of the shot. The sun is coming up beyond the buildings. This photograph is titled “Dawn”, and one cannot help but wonder whether this is a facet of Okumura’s fixation with early mornings, or whether the fixation springs from it. Following the release of this photo, the subject of “Dawn” appeared in numerous displays of Okumura’s work—but never in pictures dated after 1985. The young man, referred to by some with the title of that first photo—“Dawn”—simply vanished from Okumura’s lens. Okumura never spoke about “Dawn” in interviews or remarks on his own work, and he never answered questions about him. “Dawn”, as a person, remained entirely in mystery […]

The letters, notes, and excerpts compiled here were donated to this project from Okumura’s personal works by his niece. Notably, each of these was written by Okumura, and not received by him. In other words, these are letters that were never sent. While this on its own is not uncommon, Okumura’s letters sometimes read as though they’re half of a whole, and ongoing, correspondence.

\--

Dear Ash,

How are you doing? I hope, beautifully. It’s been a while, but I hope you are doing beautifully. I hope you are in the most beautiful place anyone has ever seen. More and more, I want to see it too. Sing told me I shouldn’t leave. I didn’t tell him how I wish to come see you, but he figured it. He’s smart. I know you have been the smartest person in the world, or something, but Sing is growing up smart. And he’s growing up a lot. So he says I should stay where I am. Even Yut Lung said it to me when he called one time, and do you know how much that hurt my pride? Ha ha.

But New York is less beautiful without you here. Sometimes I just want a change of scenery.

Sorry if I wait a while longer to come. I think you would be angry with me anyway for chasing you around. I don’t want to leave you alone, but you are stubborn that way. Always running off by yourself. Always forgetting I try to be right behind you. Always.

Stupid Ash. I hope it’s beautiful where you are.

Yours,  
Eiji

\--

Okumura never married and never had children. He was never known to take a lover at all during his career in artistic photography. Can we be sure that this is as much a love letter as it sounds? If nothing else, Okumura was pining for this person, whatever that may have meant for him. There’s something bleak in the undercurrent of his words—he misses this person, yes, and he speaks like he expects to see “Ash” again, but at the same time, it feels hopeless…[and] I wondered if “Ash” had been an unknown lover who had ended their relationship. […]

This isn’t the only time Okumura’s writings sound bleak—and it’s not the bleakest, either.

\--

Ash,

Had lunch with Max today. Wish you could have been. He brought Michael with him, who asked so many questions. That’s why we all sat down together. Michael wanted to know a lot, and Max didn’t know how to say it. Ash, I didn’t know how to say it, either. Wish you could have been. You knew before what to say to him and how to touch his hair. You would know now too. I wasn’t done learning from you but I guess I have to be.

Eiji

\--

It was here that I began to wonder whether “Ash” had passed away at some point, and if so, when. During these intended correspondences? Or even before? Perhaps the letters were an exercise in mourning for Okumura, an expression of grief meant for someone who had not left him, but who had been taken…[and yet], in other letters, Okumura sounds jubilant.

\--

Dear Ash,

You should be proud of Sing. Don’t act like you’re not! I want to say I am the proudest of him in the whole world, but I think I have some competition. Cain might be at the very front with me. Yut Lung is proud I know, but he won’t act as proud as he feels. But, of course. We have never known him to just be pleased. I guess I shouldn’t be petty about him at a time like this, but I will admit it, that I want to make you smirk.

Well, you want to know why we are all so proud of Sing, right? He started university! NYU. Isn’t it amazing? He didn’t want to apply there at first because he thought it was hopeless. But he did, and it wasn’t. Yut Lung helped. (I couldn’t believe the price. Oh my god.) And Max wrote a letter of recommendation. Fancy! You know, he would have done that for you too. But who needs university, right, Oh-So-Smart?

Actually, I think it could be good for you. But what do I know, I am just an old man, of course.

[A curious statement. Okumura would have been younger than 30 at the time this was written.]

So, we threw him a party. We told him how proud we are. I told him how proud I am. I am pretty sure you’re proud, Ash, but I didn’t tell it to him. I think it would be difficult.

We miss you. I miss you.

Please, smile about Sing. I won’t tell him.

Yours always,  
Eiji

\--

This is more of a glimpse into Okumura’s life than anything he ever said when being interviewed. We have no word of who these people were to him, other than loved ones. After receiving these letters from Okumura’s niece, I didn’t ask her much about them, outside of a few questions I had for clarification. All we know, then, is all we can read, and what we can read is that Okumura had rich, celebrated friendships.

The bulk of these riches, however, seem to have been saved for “Ash”. Okumura speaks tenderly and furiously in different turns, sometimes lashing out in a sort of hurt confusion…[his] oscillating feelings toward “Ash” peak in a single letter, where he seems to stray all across the spectrum of emotion. It remains one of the purest, rawest letters I have compiled in this volume.

\--

Dear Ash,

I’m going crazy. I keep thinking I see you. Obviously, I don’t. Obviously, you are gone too far away for me to see.  There’s no way I can see you and I’m ashamed with myself for thinking that anybody’s hair is the same color as yours, or anybody’s shoulders are the same way as yours. I don’t mean to look at anybody else and think it could be you, Ash. I just feel that I need someone to be you, so that you are nearby. So that I can be nearby. Ash, I said it was forever, so I need to be nearby. I’m sorry for thinking that anybody else in the world could be even a little bit like you.

But it would be like you, the way you are, to be nearby without telling me. You want me nearby, too, but you pushed me away so much. Are you pushing me away now? If you can look at me sometimes, I don’t think I can stand it. It would hurt me so badly. I can’t let that be true.

And if it’s not true it means that neither of us are nearby, which is worse and hurts more than anything. I don’t want it to be true that you’re watching me without letting me see you, but I don’t want it to be true that we are so far apart. My soul is trying to be near you. Ash, my soul is crying, and struggling, to be near you. I’m going crazy because the only thing that can stop this is to have you here. I am so much more selfish than anybody thought, even me. Because I don’t want to know that we can’t meet again. I want us to meet again right now. Right now, before I can’t take it anymore.

Ash, you have made my life so beautiful. I never knew how bad hurting could be, before I met you. I am glad I know now. I am glad to have known all the things I learned through you. The fear. The anger. The love, the love, the love. I am more of a person because I know you. If my soul is always with you, then this is true too: Ash, you are my soul. You are the parts of my heart I never knew about. Why did you take those parts away from me? What am I suppose to do without them? My blood is still inside my body, but some days it still feels like it’s going through empty spaces. When I make breakfast, I want to hear you complain. When I go to bed, I want you to wake me up when you can’t sleep. You shouldn’t have given me those things if you were going to take them away.

No. They are still with me. In everything I do and breathe, they are with me… because you are my heart. And if I am still living, I must have my heart inside me. I can hardly believe it’s true, but it must be true.

I found a dog today. I brought it home. Sing came home from classes and worried. Well, it was because I was crying and crying. I cried when I found the dog and brought it home. It was hurt and dirty and golden, and young, and beautiful. It was like you, Ash. It was crying, and I was crying. I washed that dog and I cried for you.

Please, let me dream about you tonight. Let me have one good dream of you. Let me have the beautiful dream.

I’ll write again. I’ll write forever.

Yours always,  
Eiji

\--

We don’t know whether “Ash” was a man or a woman. We don’t know whether “Ash” was “Dawn”. Whether they were lovers, whether “Ash” was dead or alive, what any of this meant… We only know that it meant something. It meant something deep and irreversible. Something eternal. Perhaps that’s all we need to learn about human beings and their hearts.

When I first read these letters, already knowing Okumura’s name and work, I was hoping to solve a mystery. I held that hope throughout my second and third rounds of reading them, too. But the fourth time I read Okumura’s letters, I understood that I was betraying my goal in trying to use them to decode his life, his love, and his grief. The purpose of this project was to illustrate the times during which letters like these were written…[and] to examine the thoughts and wishes of the writers, and not my own thoughts and wishes. So, whether or not these letters were meant for the mysterious “Dawn”, and whatever loss the writing portrays, Okumura’s life and love and grief are on display, crystallized within their unmarked envelopes. We must see them for what they are: the adoration and loss, in great and equal measure, between two individual people. We must know this much: Eiji Okumura never stopped seeking the “Dawn” […]


End file.
